Hays plc (HAS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the interim results for the 6 months of the first half of 2022 ended on the 31st of December conference call. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today on Thursday, the 24th of February 2022. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Alistair Cox. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our half year results. Clearly, we're very mindful of the situation that's unfolding as we speak in the Ukraine, but it's too early to comment on that. We're here today to talk about our first half year results, and that's a good story. It's one of our record fees, the fastest profit growth in our history and an upgrade to our FY '22 profit expectations. As usual, I'll take you through the operating review. Paul will then cover the detailed financials and our current trading. And then I'll finish off with an update on our strategy. The pandemic has obviously changed so many things in our lives, in the world of work and in our business. There's just too much going on to talk about everything today, but we'll elaborate more in our Investor Day on April 28. Suffice to say though, employers are changing what they're looking for, where they recruit from, and they're also making faster hiring decisions. Employees are taking career decisions at a pace faster than we've ever seen before. Working conditions have transformed with the new normal of hybrid and remote working. And the demand for talent combined with insufficient supply in many areas is leading now to major skill shortages. And that is driving up the price of skilled labor, with real wage inflation evident for the first time in a decade. That scale of change in the world of work brings us massive opportunities, but it also means that we ourselves have had to change faster than ever before to capitalize on those opportunities. And that's the next chapter of our story. With so much activity going on in the world of work, we've never been busier nor our purpose more relevant. Over the last 6 months, we've helped over 150,000 people find new jobs. And we've delivered almost 0.5 million online training courses to candidates looking to upgrade their skills for the new economy. And with such confidence in the job market, we've invested aggressively to both grow our consultant capacity faster than ever before as well as repositioning our business towards those areas where we see the most significant longer-term opportunity. That investment, combined with a confident market backdrop, drove both record half year fees as well as a sharp recovery in profit, up fourfold to GBP 101.6 million. With that performance and the continued momentum that we see everywhere, we've now upgraded our expectations again. And we now believe full year profits are on track to be in the GBP 210 million to GBP 215 million range, which is ahead of current expectations. It's not just about the profit though. We've also made some great progress in our societal priorities. We're now a carbon-neutral company. We're well underway with our planning to be net 0. We brought major career training programs to our markets, free of charge, to help people get on in their lives and promote social mobility. And linked to that, our Hays Health charitable work is bringing our expertise and networks to new communities where people have traditionally not been able to access our capabilities to, again, help thousands of people create something better for themselves in life. And then finally, for our shareholders, having delivered a strong profit recovery, we've continued to generate significant cash and have proposed an interim core dividend of 0.95p per share after we paid GBP 170 million in dividends just last November. We also expect to announce a further substantial dividend at our full year results in August. And I have to say that after almost 15 years as CEO here, we've not had a set of results for all of our stakeholders quite like this, but I do think that we've also got a lot further to go. So let me turn then to our financial results. Group fees were up 39% to a record half year level of GBP 565 million. 21 of our 33 countries produced half year records. And September and November were all-time monthly highs. The sheer uniformity of this global recovery has been unprecedented and I think quite remarkable. Our Perm business was outstanding with fees up 62%. Temp, which, if you remember, was relatively resilient in the prior year, still grew by 25% off a higher base. Activity levels in both sectors were very strong. Looking by industry, our largest business, Technology, grew 35% globally and in our second quarter with 20% above pre-pandemic highs as the results of our earlier investments came through. Accountancy & Finance was up strongly, up 41%. And even though its recovery started slightly later, our Construction & Property business grew by 26%. Growing in the enterprise organization market is also a core plank of our strategy. And Hays Talent Solutions grew by 1/3 as we continued to take market share and is now more than 1/5 larger than at its previous peaks. We've started to rapidly increase our own headcount to capitalize on the recovery around a year ago, and that investment accelerated in our first half. We added well over 1,000 new consultants in the last 6 months which takes us to over 1,700 additions in the last year. Despite these headcount additions, consultant productivity was excellent. And with so much latent capacity now moving up the productivity curve, we're underpinning our future fee growth. And with such a strong improvement in fees, our operating profit grew faster than we've ever experienced, and it consistently exceeded our expectations. Group operating profit of GBP 101.6 million was 7% more than we made in all of last year and represented 45% sequential growth on our second half last year. Those profits only tell part of the story though. I think each business has delivered on many more fronts. So let me give you additional color on each division, and we'll start over in Australia and New Zealand. As everywhere, growth in ANZ was strong and momentum improved as lockdown restrictions eased during the half. Fees grew by 1/3, and operating profit by 60% year-on-year, that's 14% up sequentially versus the second half last year. Perm fees were up 86%. And temp, which again was more resilient a year ago, it was up 14%. Business confidence steadily improved. And skill shortages were acute, not helped by the borders remaining closed. Technology fees hit a record, up 45%. And A&F, office support and HR all recovered very strongly, up 35%, 48% and 58 -- 56%, respectively. I think a special shout out is due to our team in New Zealand who delivered a huge record, with fees up 56%. If you remember, we put new leadership into New Zealand 3 years ago, and I'm delighted that they have returned this business to where it belongs as a market leader, with more to come. And finally, with demand activity and momentum all so strong, we increased consultant headcount by 12% in the half year and 29% year-on-year. Turning now to our largest country, Germany. In a world of record performances, arguably, this was our standout performer. Fees were up 38% in what is already a massive business. And operating profit up 317%, that's 63% up on the second half last year. Overall, business confidence was high, with clients increasingly investing in new projects as well as extending existing ones. Our largest business of contracting produced its own half year record with fees up 22% and record numbers of contractors working. Temp growth was faster still, up 36% on an underlying basis. And Germany simply needs more highly skilled contracting and temp talent. And as the leader in this space, we'll continue to open up that market. And then in the Perm world, the Perm market growth was also excellent up 57%. And with such strong activity in markets, we increased consultant headcount by 8% in the half and 12% year-on-year. Overall, I'm very happy with our progress in Germany. And they hit a record fee level in November, which shows just how well they're doing. I said at last year's prelims that Germany is our biggest profit growth opportunity over the next 2 years. So it's very reassuring to see the results coming through already. There are decades of structural opportunity to go for though, which is why I believe Germany remains the most exciting long-term recruitment opportunity in our world to date. We'll demonstrate that at our Investor Day as we already start from a leadership position, and we intend to double down on that. And then moving to the U.K. and Ireland. Fees increased by 39%. And profit grew by over GBP 19 million year-on-year and was up 46% versus our second half last year. Again, Perm fees led the way, up an excellent 69%, with Temp up 21% just as we saw in other markets. Conditions in the private sector was strong with fees up 52% and the public sector grew by 16%. By sector, again, a familiar theme as technology continued to hit new records, fees up 50%, off an already significant business. A&F, office support and HR were also excellent, up 46%, 80% and 123%, respectively, while CMP grew by 20%. And again, we increased consultant headcount by 11% in the first half and by 23% year-on-year as we invested into the recovery. And then finally, our Rest of World division comprises of 28 countries, and 20 of them delivered fee records. Fees were up 43%, with operating profit up GBP 21 million year-on-year or up 70% versus the second half last year. Perm fees again led the way, up 55%, with Temp up 23%. Regionally, EMEA, which is over half of this division, grew by 35%, with consistent growth across countries. The Americas were stronger, up 60%, led by the States and Brazil. And Asia was also excellent, up 49%, led by China. We've got plenty of structural growth opportunities across the Rest of the World. And we increased headcount by 22% in the half and by 36% year-on-year. But there's a long runway ahead to build ever greater scale across the entire division, and we'll continue to invest to deliver on that promise. So in summary, I think we've come a long way this half. To be back at record fees so quickly and with profits rebounding so fast, we find ourselves in a very strong position. The recovery in our performance is uniform globally, underpinned by high levels of client and candidate confidence. With skill shortages becoming more acute, with wage inflation becoming more widespread and with our investment program delivering results and with more to come, we're now raising our ambition. And as we stand here today, we see FY '22 operating profit of between GBP 210 million to GBP 215 million, ahead of consensus expectations. I'll now hand over to Paul for a deeper look at our financial performance and an overview on current trading.

Just quickly before Paul starts, this is David Phillips, Head of IR. We gather that the phone line is working okay, but the Internet audio may be struggling. Could I ask the moderator to just double check what is going? Slides are appearing on the website, but audio is not accompanying. We'll continue with the call as is because the phone line is apparently working. But could, moderator, please check the Internet audio ASAP?

Well, thank you, Alistair, and David. And good morning, everyone. Starting with the highlights of the financial review. To set the context of the record fees and excellent profit growth we're reporting today, it's worth a quick reminder of trading trends over the last 3 years. Global economic conditions have been slowing well before the pandemic, as can be seen in the trends in our fees from Q3 FY '19 to Q2 FY '20. As the pandemic unfolded in Q3 and especially Q4 FY '20, severe restrictions and lockdowns caused the fastest decline in our 53-year history. We entered FY '21 with fees sequentially stable. And as restrictions eased, client activity and fees started to improve and accelerated, with strong sequential growth in Q3 and Q4 FY '21. Coming on to the current year, we entered FY '22 with good momentum in all our regions. We delivered good sequential fee growth in all divisions versus half 2 FY '21, an all-time record fee months in September and then November 2021. Finally, as can be seen in the graph, whilst Perm was heavily impacted during the initial stages of pandemic and the sequential growth in Temp was stronger in the initial stages of recovery, from March '21 onwards, the recovery has been increasingly Perm dominated as clients and candidate confidence improved to unprecedented levels. Overall, our recovery and performance in both Perm and Temp have been excellent. This slide summarizes an excellent half year performance with like-for-like -- record like-for-like fees and a strong rebound in profit and cash position. Net fees increased by 39% on a like-for-like basis and our Q2 fees were up 11% versus pre-pandemic levels. For information, the fee numbers shown on the left-hand side are headline fees. But on a like-for-like exchange rate basis, half 1 FY '22 is GBP 17 million higher than half 1 FY '19. Operating profit quadrupled to GBP 101.6 million and was 45% higher than half 2 FY '21 despite the significant investments in the half. We delivered another good cash performance with net cash of GBP 237 million and GBP 170 million of dividends in November, and we upgraded profit expectations in January 2022 in these interims. Moving on to the income statement. Turnover increased by 15%, with the difference between turnover and fee growth, primarily driven by excellent growth in our Perm fees and the significant improvement in Temp margin. The difference between headline and like-for-like growth rates is primarily the result of the strengthening of sterling versus our main trading currencies of the euro and the Australian dollar. Overall, FX movements reduced net fees and operating profits of GBP 15.8 million and GBP 1.3 million, respectively. Earnings per share is 4.08p, a 444% increase versus prior year, driven by the significant increase in profit and the effect of lower group effective tax rate. Alistair covered regional trading earlier, and I'll just pick up 2 specific points. Firstly, an update on our German Temp business, where as required under German law, we implied -- employed temp workers. Temp fees increased by 75% on a headline basis. However, our comparative fees in half 1 FY '21 included GBP 6.2 million in temp severance and underutilization costs. Excluding this, underlying temp fees increased by 36%. Average temp volumes improved through the half but remained 18% below previous peaks, mainly due to slower recovery in the automotive and manufacturing sectors. And secondly, the 22% increase in German contracting business, which included a record quarter in Q2, was driven by strong accelerating growth in contractor volumes. Volumes in Q2 were 10% above prior peak levels, although this was partially offset by 5% lower average weekly hours per contractor, with an increasing number of part-time assignments over the last 2 years. Moving on to look at the performances of Perm and Temp. Our Perm business, 44% of net fees, increased by 62%, with a 58% increase in volume and 3% increase in our average Perm fee, primarily in Q2 as wage inflation increased. Our Temp business, 56% of group net fees, increased by 25% due to 4 factors: a volume increase of 13%; a 3% positive effect of mix, driven by higher paid specialisms, such as Technology and Life Sciences and also wage inflation; minimal German tech severance and utilization costs, as explained earlier; and finally and most importantly, 80 basis points or 6% increase in underlying margin, driven by improvements in pricing and wage inflation, the first increase in temp margin since FY '15. On this slide, we set out the operating profit bridge between half 1 FY '21 and FY '22. Starting with half year FY '21 profit of GBP 25.1 million, we subtract the negative impact of exchange on profit of GBP 1.3 million and add the 39% increase in like-for-like fees of GBP 158.3 million, explained by Alistair earlier. Like-for-like costs increased by GBP 80.5 million or 21%, comprising staff costs at GBP 69.1 million, of which 40% related to the year-on-year increase in our average headcount, driven by investments in our consultant base, which is 24% higher than 12 months ago. But note, this excludes SGI investment. And 29% of higher commissions paid to consultants, this was driven by the GBP 158 million increase in fees and also 100 basis point increase in average commission percentage paid to consultants, driven by the excellent level of consultant productivity, most notably in our Perm business. We invested GBP 8 million in strategic growth initiatives, an incremental GBP 4 million higher than prior year. And finally, as restrictions eased, travel and entertainment costs increased by GBP 2.6 million. And we incurred modest increases in advertising, IT and professional costs, partially offset by savings on property. We entered the half with a periodic cost base of GBP 70 million and exited the half of GBP 78 million per period. And clearly, additional investment in SGI and Germany will increase the cost base further in the second half. As a reminder, the P&L is sensitive to changes in key exchange rates, namely the Australian dollar and especially the euro. The group does not undertake any P&L translation hedging arrangements. Sterling strengthening versus our main currencies is a headwind to FY '22 profit. If we retranslate FY '21 profits of GBP 95 million at current exchange rates, profits will decline by GBP 7 million. However, given our operating profit will increase significantly in FY '22, FX movements are highly likely to have a much larger negative impact on FY '22 profits. Moving on to conversion rates. Group conversion rates increased from 5.9% to 18%, reflecting a strong sequential improvements in profitability despite significant investments in consult headcount. This represented a good drop -- like-for-like drop-through rate of incremental fees to profits of 49%, in line with our expectations as we balance driving profitability and investing for growth. For the full year, we expect a drop-through rate of 45% to 50%, with a slightly lower drop-through in the second half as our current cost base has the full impact of half 1 consultant additions. And in the second half, we'll invest further in SGI Projects and Germany. At the regional level, especially encouraging is the strong sequential growth achieved in our German business as the higher value and longer length of contracting and temp assignments offers the greatest opportunity for profit growth in the group over the next few years. Germany delivered the biggest step change in profitability in the half, with the conversion rate increasing to 25%, an excellent drop-through of 70%. And whilst the drop through was slightly lower in the second half, the added investment we'll make in Germany will drive strong fee and profit growth in FY '23 and beyond. And finally, we continue to expect a drop-through rate of around or above 50% in FY '23 and are confident will drive our conversion rate back to pre -- back and beyond pre-pandemic levels in the next 2 to 3 years. Moving on to interest and tax. The net finance charge for the half decreased to GBP 3.9 million. The largest component remains a noncash IFRS 16 interest on lease liabilities. And looking ahead, we expect the net finance charge for the full year to be GBP 8 million, of which GBP 7 million is noncash. Our effective tax rate decreased from 40% to 30%. And the ETR reflects the group's geographic mix of profits, with a strong recovery of profit in countries with relatively low tax rates, such as the U.K., plus utilization of tax losses in certain countries. We expect the ETR in FY '22 to be around 30%. On this slide, we've summarized the key components of our cash flow. The chart on the left details our sources of cash flow, starting with profit of GBP 101.6 million. We add back noncash items of GBP 40.9 million, predominantly IFRS 16 property depreciation, other fixed asset depreciation and amortization and share-based payments. We then subtract a working capital outflow of GBP 79.3 million, in line with our expectations and reflecting growth in our Temp book, plus some normalization in client payment terms. And we've ended up lease payments of GBP 23.9 million. This leaves an operating cash flow of GBP 39.3 million, representing an underlying conversion of profits into cash of 39%. From this, we paid tax of GBP 11.6 million and net interest of GBP 0.4 million, leading to free cash flow of GBP 27.3 million. On the right-hand slide, we detail how the cash has been used. The main items were: the payment of GBP 170 million of core and special dividends in November; purchase of our own shares of GBP 11.6 million to satisfy employee-based share payment awards over the next 2 years; CapEx of GBP 9.9 million; and pension deficit payments of GBP 8.6 million. And for the full year, we continue to expect CapEx to be GBP 25 million. This good cash performance meant we finished the half with a strong cash position of GBP 236.9 million. The group has in place a GBP 210 million revolving credit facility that reduces in November '24 to GBP 170 million and expires in 2025. On this slide, we compare the balance sheet as of December and June 2021. The 2 main movements were: firstly, an increase in IAS 19 pension accounting surplus to GBP 95 million due to higher asset values, changes in assumptions on scheme demographics and company contributions, partially offset by a decrease in the discount rate and an increase in inflation expectations; and secondly, the increase in working capital as explained earlier. And finally, the 2021 triennial valuation has been completed and quantified the actuarial deficit at GBP 24 million. There's no change to our deficit recovery payments of GBP 17 million in FY '22, which will increase at 3% per year. Our priorities for free cash flow remain unchanged, namely to fund the group's investment and development, maintain a strong balance sheet, deliver a sustainable and appropriate core dividend, and to return surplus cash via the payment of special dividends to shareholders. In line with this policy, the Board has declared an interim core dividend of 0.95p per share. The Board expects to pay another substantial dividend in respect to FY '22. The policy for such dividends is based on distributing all funds above the cash flow for GBP 100 million at each financial year-end, subject to a positive cash outlook and any residual working capital buffer. The group remains highly cash generative, with a strong track record of returning capital to shareholders, including the payments of GBP 374 million of dividends in respect to financial years 2017 to 2019. This slide updates our progress in the actions we announced in August to further streamline our business and drive material annual cost savings in the future. We've made good progress in each of our cost-saving initiatives, which, as a reminder, ultimately reached GBP 30 million of annual savings versus pre-pandemic levels. Split evenly across, firstly, property by reducing our footprint and its cost. And in the first half, property costs have decreased by GBP 1.2 million, so a good progress to date. Second, back-office efficiencies through increased use of automation and existing lower-cost shared service centers. The group projects, led by James Hilton, are fully mobilized. Detailed plans will be signed off by June 2022, with the implementation of projects starting in FY '23, to be completed by the end of FY '25. And finally, travel, as better use of video technology become permanent and as we deliver on absolute travel reduction targets to support our net 0 journey, such as reducing flights by 40% versus pre-pandemic levels. To date, we've held on to GBP 15 million of annual savings versus pre-pandemic cost base. So we're gaining good progress to date. And on cash, as anticipated, we saw a modest normalization in client payment terms during the half, which meant debtor days increased to 35 days versus 34 days in the first half last year and 33 days at year-end. We continue to expect a long-term cash benefit from sustainably lower debtor days of circa GBP 45 million versus pre-pandemic level. This will, of course, lead to greater cash returns to shareholders. So in summary, in the first half, we delivered record fees with excellent profit growth. Activity levels remained strong in all of our major markets, driven by high client and candidate confidence. Encouragingly, on the back of clear wage inflation, we're driving improvements in our margins via more robust pricing, with increases in our temp margin and average perm fee. Our profit performance in the half was also strong as we balanced driving a good drop-through rate of incremental fees into profits of 49%, with adding 1,000 consultants to position ourselves for future growth and to capitalize on the cyclical recovery and long-term structural growth opportunities. Consultant productivity was excellent, and we expect to drive this further in FY '23. All of this further strengthened our financial position. And the Board expects to announce a substantial special dividend in respect of FY '22 at our prelim results in August. Coming on to current trading. Trading across all of our markets is strong, and our new year return to work has been good overall. Momentum is strong in Perm, with activity exceeding pre-Christmas levels by the end of January. In Temp, our overall new year return to work was initially one week slower than in prior years, particularly in Australia, with temps taking additional vacations and modestly higher average sickness levels related to the Omicron variant. Encouragingly, overall temp volumes have returned to pre-Christmas levels by early February, in line with normal trends. Consistent with prior years, due to the timing of public holidays, there are 6 fewer working days in our second half versus the first half. This has no impact on year-on-year growth comparative. But we'll clearly act to the headwind on sequential profit growth versus the first half, particularly in our Temp and contracting business. Currency movements are likely to have a larger negative impact as group profits increased in FY '22. Finally, we've again upgraded our FY '22 profit expectations, with FY '22 now expected to be between GBP 210 million and GBP 215 million. And with that, I'll hand you back to Alistair, who will update you on strategy before we take your questions.

Thank you, Paul. We usually use the strategy section to highlight the key structural drivers which are shaping our future plans. However, given that we've got our Investor Day on the 28th of April, which is the first one that we've held since 2017, I think it's better to save the deep dive into what's going on in our markets until then. Suffice to say though, I personally have never seen such a wide range of profound changes in the world of work as what we're seeing today. And those are throwing up some really interesting opportunities for us. And a lot of our forward thinking is designed to capitalize on what's going on. You can see here some of the themes as clients struggle to find the talent and what that might mean on wages, on working styles, workforce demographics, training and skill levels, for example. Wage inflation and job churn are obvious positives for us. But as organizations also look at the type of workforce that they need, where they're located, how they work and how they develop the skills that they need, there are opportunities for us to make ourselves ever more relevant and more embedded in our clients to help solve those problems. So I hope you can join us in April to hear all of that. And today, I'll focus on how we're going in our SGI program. I said back in August that we're following 2 simultaneous investment paths. The first capitalizes on the strong cyclical recovery across the world. And as we've said, we added over 1,700 new consultants in the last year. 1,250 of whom are in what you could call business as usual investment to just meet the unprecedented levels of demand that we're seeing. That's obviously a much greater level of general investment than we've ever done before, but it's clearly paying off. The second investment path is SGI. And this is designed to reposition our business to make sure that we are the leader in those areas that we think will be the most attractive and important in the future and to do this quickly. Remember, the genesis of this program was back in May 2020 when we asked ourselves 3 questions. Firstly, what services the world will need once the pandemic has passed? Secondly, how will it want those services delivered? And then thirdly, how can we best position ourselves as global market leaders in those areas? And I'm very pleased with what we're delivering on this already, and all our chosen areas are hitting their targets. We invested GBP 15 million in 20 projects last year, adding 250 consultants. That early success meant that we raised our ambitions this year. And in the first half, we added another 300 heads in over 35 projects at a cost of GBP 8 million in the half. We'll add a further 100 more consultants in SGI projects in our second half, taking cumulative FY '21 and FY '22 SGI additions to 650. That's 50 more than we expected in August. Encouragingly though, FY '22 SGI fees are now running slightly ahead of plan, meaning that our full year net investment target remains at the GBP 20 million we stated earlier. Examples of what this means practically are the establishment of new teams in the engineering, civils and sustainability sectors in the U.K., which are all now up and running under dedicated leadership. In the States, we've doubled down both cyber and Life Sciences, with the additional capacity and leadership that we added equivalent to the size of a small acquisition, but obviously without the attached risk. We've invested in our Asian enterprise account business to win more and bigger deals. And in Germany and the U.K., we're ramping up quickly our project services business, which opens up a whole new spend category in our clients. However, the largest element of SGI is in technology recruitment globally. Well over half of our SGI heads in the first half were fee earners in the tech space. And our investment from last year is a large part of why our technology fees are now at record levels, up 35% in the half, including our second quarter fees, up over 20% versus pre-pandemic levels. Today, we're the global leader in technology recruitment, with the scale and geographic coverage that is probably unique in our world. However, we built that leadership over the last 10 years. And we delivered a 12% fee growth CAGR all the way up to the pandemic. However, our recent focus has accelerated that to the 35% we just delivered in the first half. To support our strategy, we launched Hays Technology as a global brand. And that has been super successful as we've seen engagement levels with our market increased dramatically in the last year. Our business is also far more diversified by geography and skill set. Fees in the Rest of the World division are more than 1/5 above pre-pandemic levels. And this division has doubled its relative scale and is now 35% of our global tech fees. The U.K. was already a big tech business, and yet it still increased by 50% in the half and is now 1/3 bigger than pre-pandemic. So if anyone thinks the U.K. has got no structural opportunities, then think again. And it's a similar story in ANZ. Germany has always been our largest tech business. And having grown 22%, it's now back above pre-pandemic levels on a monthly basis, and I expect it to continue to hit new records. So today, we've already grown our annualized tech fee run rate to around GBP 300 million, which is well on the way to the goal that we announced just back in August of GBP 500 million in the next 5 years. We'll set out our plans on how to get there at the Investor Day, but it's obviously from a range of different areas. We'll expand our services. We'll continue to enter new verticals and target different client types across all sectors. But the advantage that we have to deliver on all of this is our existing global infrastructure, our management expertise, our brand, and the industry partnerships that we've built over many years. And those are all vital ingredients for our success as well as being very hard to replicate. However, the price to be the undisputed leader in global tech recruitment is absolutely enormous, and we're committed to getting there. So in conclusion, I think it's been a very successful 6 months. We've delivered record fees. And we produced the fastest profit growth in our history. We've invested more than ever before to capitalize on that market recovery and in long-term structural opportunities. Our consultants today are operating at excellent productivity levels, but there's a lot more to come as our more recent joiners start to build higher fees. I think that there's a palpable sense of ambition and optimism around our business, and that gives me great confidence for the next chapter. And the route to exceeding pre-pandemic levels of profit by FY '23 is clear, but there's clearly lots to do to get there. And then finally, a word on our other news today, that Paul has decided to retire and will step down at the end of September, and that James Hilton is being promoted to Group Finance Director. Paul has made a massive contribution to our company over the last 16 years. And as you've heard, he leaves the business in the best possible shape and arguably with the greatest ever set of opportunities ahead. Paul has been a trusted and talented support to me throughout. And I wish him the very best in his well-earned retirement. So also a testament to Paul's personal investment in the development of his team that we have in James, someone with all the skills, experience and insight, to now step up as our new CFO. James and I have worked together over many years now. And I very much look forward to continuing to work alongside him in his new role. We'd now be delighted to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS.

It's Rory here. And 2 to start with. Firstly, you saw that 49% drop-through, while growing headcount 26%. Now the headcount is slowing to a plus 3% to 5% over the next quarter. Can you just talk us through the implications to productivity? And if you're still confident that drop-throughs next year can be back to over 50%. And then secondly, you gave some really interesting breakdowns of fee growth in this wage inflation backdrop. Perm fees up 3%. Temp margin up 80 bps. Should we take it that, that level of price growth is unlike anything you've really seen since 2007? And what's your view on how that could continue or how sticky it is?

Thank you, Rory. I'll take these, and Alistair might make some comments at the end. So clearly, on the 49% drop-through, first, I think we're really happy with that. There's no doubt that whilst it was in the range of 40% to 50%, it was absolutely helped by the pricing part, which I'll come back to in a minute because this is clearly the strongest pickup we've had, certainly in temp margin across my time as CFO. You're right, then that our headcount investment will be slower in the second half. But of course, we have got more SGI. We are absolutely determined, we've already got a market-leading technology business, but it can be much bigger, and we will continue to invest in it. . We expect to have slightly lower productivity in the second half. Why? -- Sorry, slightly lower drop-through in the second half. Why? Because a lot of that investment, of course, came in, in Q2. And therefore, we come into this 6-month period with a full cost base. But we're very confident when we get into FY '23 that we'll be driving all that productivity -- all those headcount up the productivity curve, and that will enable us to drive productivity next year. And I think that then follows on to why we think we can get above 50% drop-through going into next year. We'll be getting good returns on the SGI programs that we did both in FY '21 and FY '22. We'll be driving consultant productivity on the significant headcount that we've put in. And assuming the markets are supportive, we're still likely to continue to invest, though it's unlikely to be the same scale of what we've done this year. Moving then on to wage inflation. Look, the 3% average perm fee, that came in, in Q2. And I think that's to be expected in the current market. The real significant part of it was, of course, we get greater churn on temp contracts. And it has enabled us to just be a bit firmer on pricing. And of course, with a skill short labor market, our clients are having to offer higher rates to attract temps by us. And again, that's improved our margin. So for me, from a numerical standpoint, the 2 numbers that stood out in these results is one journey, and we've talked about that, and secondly, the fact we had an 80 basis point increase in the underlying temp margin. That is certainly the highest increase across my almost 16 years here. It grew across the half. And I think it's a clear sign, as we've always said, that we're a beneficiary of wage inflation, although clearly, we haven't had much of it for the last 10 years.

I think that's one of the key points I'd just reiterate, Rory. We've never really spoken about real wage inflation in the last 10 years. I can't really remember ever having spoken about it, to be honest, in all my time as a CEO. But we are seeing it real evidence on a global basis right now. And it falls into sort of 2 areas. General wage inflation for somebody who's staying in their job is now in the 3% to 5% type range. But as people are changing jobs, we're seeing much higher levels than that. People have always moved jobs and typically maybe looked at something like a 10% raise. But they're looking at something more like 10% to 20% raises now in a host of different areas. And over the last few years, we've very purposefully been building our business to position it in areas of high demand, high demand and skill shortage. That's coming to pass now. And just witness what's going on in the technology sector around the world, rampant demand and simply not enough skills to go around. And those skill shortages are driving much higher levels of real wage inflation in those areas where we've positioned ourselves. So as people are changing jobs, they're looking for a higher uplift than what has traditionally been the case. And we're seeing that on a pretty consistent basis around the world. And I think it's probably set to continue for some time yet.

That's great. And finally, I know labor market churn is at record levels. But I can't say I expected that to spread all the way to the top of Hays. Paul, can you comment on why now, and maybe also how you and James are working together to prepare for the CMD and the planning in general?

Look, there's -- it's never an easy decision to pick the time you retire. I am 60, so I can't go on forever. I think the business is in a great position, Rory. It would have been inappropriate over the last couple of years. And also, this is a business I love. I focused very heavily on people development. And James Hilton will do a superb job as the CFO. He's been taking a lot of my activities over the last 1 to 2 years. He's driving all of the productivity initiatives across our business. Quite frankly, he has a better systems understanding than I do, and I think it's in good hands. And I will continue to be a major shareholder of Hays. So it's a business I love. But at some point, Rory, you have to make a decision to move on to other things.

Our next question comes from the line of George Gregory from BNP Paribas.

Yes. I just wanted to follow up, please, Paul, on your comments about conversion rates, which I think you suggested you expect to be above pre-pandemic levels in 2 to 3 years. I wondered if you could maybe elaborate a bit on that and sort of share how you think about your our business lines and where they might get to versus pre-pandemic levels, please.

George, I'm going to keep this relatively short because otherwise, you won't turn up at our Investor Day on the 28th of April, and we'd like to have a good audience there. So I think, first of all, we went into the pandemic in a much stronger position as a business versus where we were, for example, going into the GFC. We've got a beautifully diversified business. We've got massive long-term opportunities. Germany is the biggest -- one of the biggest countries in the world to still have significant outsourcing to happen. And therefore, what we're trying to get the balance right between is clearly investment and monetizing that investment. And of course, that's all about the conversion rate. So we are confident that we've made a very big increase this year. Confident we'll make a significant increase next year. But what we're not minded to do at the moment is just to stop investments, monetize it, get it back over the pre-pandemic levels to hit that target, because I think specifically in the area of technology, but also in some of the new industries, that will be missing a long-term trick. We've always run this business with a nice balance of clearly a very clear eye on the short term, but also trying to do the right thing for the medium and the long term. And we'll go into that in much greater detail on the 28th of April.

Your next question comes from the line of James Rose from Barclays.

I've got 2, please. First is going back to temp margins again. You think they can stay higher for longer? And that margin increase, are you seeing that in some of your bigger RPO work also? And then the second one is on the SGI investments and your technology markets, I don't want to steal the thunder away from the Investor Day, but do you have any idea of the sort of size of those addressable markets you're going into? It's just that GBP 500 million target you've got in terms of net fees, how should we think about that in terms of market share? I mean, is there anything over there in your own investment rates which could stop that being considerably higher, for example?

If I take the temp margin and Alistair will address SGI. I actually lost part of what you asked at the start, James. And unfortunately, it was the key words. Could you just repeat that question again? You got to 80 basis point increase, but you then cut out on the rest.

Sure. So can that temp margin stay higher? And are you seeing this in your bigger RPO work as well?

Sorry. Perfect. Do I think, first of all, that this increase is sustainable? Yes, I do. Do I think there's further opportunities? I think we're back to -- if we're going to go through a period of higher wage inflation, back to where we were when I joined in 2006, where wage inflation was returning 4% to 5%, absolutely, I think we can increase those margins. Clearly, on the larger contracted business, we have a big MSP business and we -- and a good size RPO business. Clearly, during those contractual periods, in some of those contracts, there are fixed margins. You don't have an ability to increase the margin. But clearly, if what they're paying temps increases across that period of time, then that increases. So RPO and MSP tends to be more contract-by-contract. But absolutely, one of the things we're very good at is being nimble. And being nimble, so as you look at the market conditions that there are, this is a massive skill short market, there's a real war for talent, and therefore, absolutely, we're determined to ensure that we, whenever possible, look to increase our margins. Clearly, you're in the spot type business that's easier and quicker. But in the contracted part of it, that's also on our agenda as well.

And then, James, just talking about the tech market. I personally see no limit to where we could get to. The market is not the limiting factor. It's our ability to exploit it, and our pace of growth will be the limiting factor. So when you look at some of the areas that we've opened up in the relatively recent past over the last couple of years, areas such as cybersecurity, DevOps, in the cloud world, AWS and Azure, Salesforce, ServiceNow as distinct technology platforms. But I could keep going on, and we'll talk about this at the Investor Day in some depth. But there are so many areas of technology that we're either not in or are not yet at critical mass that we believe we can invest in and leverage massively over the years to come. In terms of the scale of these markets, well, let me just give you a few stats. If you take Salesforce as a platform, for example, and this is just one of many such examples. There are websites out there today that have got 7,000 permanent jobs on them for Salesforce experts, 7,000 in one sliver of the market. If you talk to Salesforce themselves, they'll quite openly say, over the next 5 years, they expect to create 125,000 new Salesforce jobs in the U.K. alone. And I think that should give you an idea of the sheer scale of these markets. So we see no market limit to what we need. And I think that that's understandable. The whole world needs to digitize ever more. One thing the pandemic has done is accelerated the digitization of pretty much every business around the world, whether that's equipping our own employees to work remotely or taking our distribution channels in any business into a multichannel online world, every single organization needs these people. And I personally see that being set to continue for many years to come. I see no way that the world will become less dependent on technology. In fact, it will become ever more dependent. And one of the interesting facts about tech is it changes all the time. So we're opening up specialisms now in areas that 5 years ago had not really been invented. And I think over the next 5 years, we'll see that continue. The final point I'd say is, you can't just wave a magic wand and be the leader of technology recruitment. You need to have a brand. And you need to have internal expertise, capability and credibility to mean something, be something relevant to all of the people that you're talking to. Because experts in the tech world want to talk to other experts about their next career opportunity. So you can't just suddenly say, I'll become a player in the tech space. You have to build it over a period of time. And that's what we've been doing in the last 10 years. But it's just that the stars are now in wonderful alignment. We've accelerated that, and I think it sets us fair for the future.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Thomas [ Jackle ] from Jefferies.

I just got one question, if I may. I would just like to touch on the working capital. I saw that there's an outflow of about GBP 79 million for H1. Just if there's any further commentary around that and as to how we should look for the rest of the year. And then that aside, I would just like to comment to Paul, thank you, obviously, for all of your contribution. I'm sure, Kean, I'm standing in on his behalf would also be very grateful as well, and we look forward to being in touch with James in the future.

Thank you, Thomas. On working capital, as I've always said, year-end in June is very clean. We have no holidays in the way. And that is a more true reflection of our working capital position and how we've done from a credit control standpoint. Certainly, in the first 6 months of the year through to December, we've seen some of our larger clients just revert back to normal terms. So not beyond normal term, back to normal terms, we're happy with that. There's been some modest increase in debtor days. We expected that. We built that into the estimate of the amount of cash we'll retain from improvements. And then, of course, you get the normal stuff of in selling a customer paying you on the 30th of December. They pay on the 2nd of January. So my own expectation for the second half of the year is that we'll have a modest inflow. Clearly, we have -- we built the debtor book. We had a big increase in temp in September, October and November. So that was also an increase in the outflow of working capital. But I think we'll have an inflow in the second half. And of course, all of that positions us to be in a very strong cash position for year-end.

We have no further questions. Please continue.

If there's no further questions, thank you for joining us today. As I say, we're pleased with the 6-month results. There's an awful lot going on in the business, all positive, as you can see. Obviously, we're mindful of what's going on around the world. And on that note, I look forward to seeing you all at the end of April when we'll take you through our plans for the future at the Investor Day. Thanks again for your time.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.